Former President Donald Trump received bad news in the form of two polls recommending that his felony conviction could hurt his chances of defeating President Joe Biden in November.
Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for this year’s presidential election, was found guilty Thursday in New York of 34 counts of tampering with business records. The former president called the result a “disgrace,” while describing himself as “a very innocent man” and saying that “the true verdict” would be known on Election Day.
Two polls conducted shortly after the sentencing announced and released Friday reveal that Trump’s chances of getting a more favorable “verdict” at the ballot box in November may have been threatened by his conviction in Manhattan.
A poll released late Friday via Reuters/Ipsos found that 10% of Republican voters say they are “less likely” to vote for Trump because of their conviction. While 35% of the Republican electorate said it’s “more likely,” Reuters noted that the organization “will most likely vote for him, regardless of his conviction. “
Among independent voters, 25% were less likely to vote for Trump after the verdict, while 18% said it was “more likely. “A 56% majority of independents said Trump’s verdict would have no effect on his choice of president.
The poll, conducted nationally among 2,556 adults, also found that Biden had a statistically insignificant lead over Trump, with 41% of respondents favoring the incumbent president and 39% favoring Trump. Biden’s lead is just within the 2% margin of error in the poll.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to Newsweek’s request for comment on the effects of the ballots by touting the former president’s fundraising earnings at Providence and saying that “increases” had been specified in the ballots after his conviction.
“President Trump has noticed overwhelming support, which has led to a surge in polls and record fundraising numbers, totaling about $53 million in just 24 hours, 30% of which are new donors,” Cheung said in an email.
Still, a YouGov “quick poll” of 3,040 U. S. adults hours after the verdict also suggested that Trump’s conviction was not at all smart for the former president in an election that could depend only on a small number of votes in battleground states.
The vote found that 50% of Americans agreed with the jury’s verdict, only 30% believed he was not at fault, and 19% were undecided. Forty-seven percent said they thought Trump won a fair trial, while 37 percent said he didn’t.
Notably, 48% of the independent electorate surveyed agreed that Trump was guilty, compared to only 25% who said he was not guilty, though it is unclear to what extent confidence in Trump’s guilt equates to a reluctance to vote for the former president.
Several polls conducted before the verdict advised that Trump’s corrupt prestige could be enough for the winner of a close election, and polls conducted in April and May revealed that the former president would lose between five and 7 percent of the total vote with conviction.
Mark Shanahan, a professor of American politics at Britain’s University of Surrey, told Newsweek on Friday that the conviction “only affects the small percentage of the electorate in a dozen key states that will participate in this election,” while predicting that “the Trump’s crusade “We may see your help disappear” after his conviction on July 11 and with other judicial instances on the horizon.
Aila Slisco is a Newsweek night reporter founded in New York City. He focuses on national political reporting, where he covered the 2020 and 2022 elections, Donald Trump’s impeachments, and several State of the Union addresses. Other topics he has covered for Newsweek come with crime, public health, and the emergence of COVID-19. Aila was self-employed before joining Newsweek in 2019. You can reach Aila by emailing a. slisco@newsweek. com. Languages: English.
© 2024 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC